Dfan: Living in America

I just received my diploma from NYU yesterday.  Yeah!  After 5 years of part time study, I finally done with my grad school.  You may ask why took so long?  Well, with a full time job, 2 kids and 3 old German cars (a 79 Merc 450SLC, a 93 Merc 300e, a 92 BMW 525i), I was either changing diaper or changing motor oil.  I didn't really have much time left for books. :-P    

 BTW, NYU is really expensive.  It's about $1100 a school unit. Without SUN's tuition reimbursement paying half of the fee, there is no way I can afford it.  So, thank you SUN.

Let's put down the politics, wars, oil price for a while  and let the Olympics game begins!

Sun's Facebook game - "myPicks Beijing 2008"

    * The game allows people to predict winners at the Olympics
    * When a user signs in they identify themselves with a country
    * If your predictions are accurate, you win points
    * All points they accumulate are also credited to their country
    * It has a very compelling UI - that makes people want to come back
      and predict more
    * You can view the leaderboards of countries, individuals. See how
      your friends are doing. See how your fellow countrymen are doing.

This game was created on Zembly - the world�s first and easiest Facebook
development environment. Zembly is built from the ground up on Sun's
industry-leading stack of enterprise hardware and software, including
Solaris, Java, Glassfish, and MySQL, and running on Network.com's
next-generation cloud-computing platform.

Top Gear season 11 is now playing on BBC.   It's the best and most funniest car show in the world.  Don't miss it.   If you are, like me, do not have BBC channel, check out youtube or  mininova.

I have been looking for a Mercedes 450 SLC for a months and finally found one in a pretty good shape.   Brought it home a few weeks ago.  It's made in 1979.   Mercedes internal platform model is called R107.    It has a V8 4.5L engine with mechanical fuel injection. Pneumatic (air pressure control) 3-speed automatic transmission. No ABS, no air bag, no GPS, no ipod connection, no rain sensor or any electronic bull shits which is exactly why the way I like it.

I just installed Solaris on MacOS 10 minutes ago.  It was too easy.  I was thinking...how about install Windows XP on Mac OS.  How hard can it be?  So I did it without reading the user manual.

Install Windox XP on Mac OS using Virtualbox

Total time:  1.5 hour

1.  Have a copy of Windows XP ready.

2.  Download Virtualbox for Mac OS X from http://virtualbox.org.  It's only a 21MB file.

3. Install and run Virtualbox on your Mac.   Click "New" icon to create a new virtual machine.  The virtual machine wizard will guide you though the process.

• Pick a name for your virtual machine 
• Choose "Windows XP" in the OS type.
• Memory size should be at least 256MB. 
  
• Disk size set at least 2GB

4. Now you created a new virtual machine.  Click "Settings".   Go to CD/DVD-ROM.  Check "Mount CD/DVD-ROM".  Choose "host CD/DVD-ROM.  click ok.

5. Insert your Windows XP DVD media to the DVD drive.   Click the new virtual machine icon from the main window.  It will boot your virtual machine and start the Windows installation.  Just follow the rest of the XP installation and you're done.

 

I have been running Nexenta (an OpenSolaris distro) on my Intel box with VMplayer for a while.  It's great.  VMplayer is free and easy to use.    Sun recently acquired Virtualbox. Since I have a Macbook Pro at home, I was thinking to put Solaris in MacOS.  How hard can it be?

Install Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) on Mac OS using VirtualBox

Total time:  2.5 hours

1.  Obtain a SXDE.  I happen to have a DVD copy from work.  You can down it from OpenSolaris.org.  It's a 4GB file.  Burn it to a DVD.

2.  Download Virtualbox for Mac OS X from http://virtualbox.org.  It's only a 21MB file.

3. Install and start Virtualbox.   Click "New" icon to create a new virtual machine.  The virtual machine wizard will guide you though the process.

• Pick a name for your virtual machine 
• Choose "Solaris" as  OS type.
• Memory size set to at least 900MB (SXDE installation requires 800MB memory)
  
• Disk size set to 10GB (SXDE requires at least 8GB of disk space)
  

4. Now you created a new virtual machine.  Click "Settings".   Go to CD/DVD-ROM.  Check "Mount CD/DVD-ROM".  Choose "host CD/DVD-ROM.  click ok.

5. Insert the SXDE DVD media to your Mac drive.   Click your new virtual machine icon from the main window.  It will start booting your virtual machine and start the SXDE installation (see photo 1).  Just follow the SXDE installation and you're done.

Photo 1. 

 

Photo 2.   SXDE as a guest OS in MacOS

Like Leonardo DiCaprio, I want to be eco-friendly and save the  planet.   So I ordered a "Kill-a-watt" meter ($24) from Buy.com and started to measure power usage of the electronics around me.   Here's what the result for my computer equipments.   The winner is SunRay which only uses 8 watts of electricity.   At Sun, almost everyone use Sunray instead of a workstation in their office.  It works great and has decent performance. 

Dell Dimension 3000 desktop	90 watts  <-- reduce usage
Macbook Pro laptop	30 watts  <--- use more
Lenovo T60 laptop	25 watts  <-- use more
Sun Java Workstation w2100z	247 watts  <-- reduce usage
SunRay thin client station	8 watts !!!

 I also measured a few other office equipments at home.

17" LCD monitor	33 watts
Netgear 802.11b/g router (idling)	5 watts
Yahoo DSL modem (idling)	5 watts
IKEA halogen lamp	15 watts

 

 

Ever since I sold the 1992 BMW 525i three weeks ago, I've been "itching" for another classic Mercedes or BMW.  German car is like potato chip...you can't just have one. There are several models I like: Mercedes 300CD, Mercedes 380SL (or 450SL, 560SL same body style), 95 BMW 540i and 97 BMW 740i.  They are all good and have their own character.

   
 

Sun technology is getting more and more popular in China.   On Feb 27, Sun and Ministry of Education of China announced a three-year collaboration agreement to education OpenSPARC processor technologies in Chinese universities.   [Read the news at Opensparc.net]

 

 

A new appetizer on astronaut's dinner menu.   Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has created the first Kimchi (fermented cabbage) for space travelers and approved by Russian Space Institute.  This is good news because it could kick start a new wave of space foods, so astronauts are no longer have to stick with slim-fast type protein drinks.  I would like to see more space foods....space Bibibab, space Dimsum, Beijing duck, Tandori chicken, Pho, Grand slam (from Denny's), etc.   Space travel will be fun.

Our intern just recompiled Scilab on Openolaris SPARC and Solaris x86 (good job Jeff).   Scilab is a popular open source numerical computation software.  It work pretty much like MatLab.   Jeff showed me a few demos on Scilab.  It's pretty amazing.  You can do complicate scientific calculation, linear algebra, statistic with 3D graphs and scripting support.  For more info Scilab, check out the full feature list and projects at scilab.org.

Due to growing in family size, I have to...sigh...sell my BMW 525i to get a...sigh...minivan or something bigger.   It's been a wonderful 2 years of ownership.  I really like the 525i.  Style, handling, comfort, safety. It is the best balanced four-door car I have driven. The interior is so well thought out and so well assembled it makes most new cars feel archaic. It had some minor electronic problems here and there but nothing major. I fixed 90% of the problems myself.    If you are looking for a nice European car, here's my forsale post on sandiego.craigslist.  I lowered the price for quick sale.    Sun employee gets a 5% discount.  :-)

(update: SOLD)

I like MySQL.  I've been using it on my websites outside my work for years.  MySQL is simple, Fast and Free.  So I am happy that Sun bought it even though I am not quite agree with the $1B price tag.  But hey, it's not my money.   If I am the CEO for a day, this is what I will do with MySQL.  Disclaimer:  I do not have any insider news. :)

1)  Spin off MySQL and put it on IPO.   This is the fastest way to get the $1B investment back.  MySQL is a popular brand.  It should be easy to get $1B IPO from the market (see VMware IPO).    It also allows everyone to own a piece of this wonder software company (via stock purchase).

2)  Put a MySQL download button on sun.com website.  I want more customers.  I want people to know MySQL is now part of Sun.

3)  Put MySQL on every marketing material.  We need to get the ball rolling. 

Top Gear season 10 just ended last December.  It was another great great season.  Just love the show.  Unfortunately, it is not available on US television anymore for whatever reason.  So, if you want to watch it, you will have to find bit & pieces on Youtube,  or download the episodes from the net.
(hints: finalgear). 

Episode 1 - Porsche 911 GT RS, Lambo Gallardo, Aston Martin V8 Vantage

Episode 2 - Audi R8

Episode 3 - Rolls Royce Fantom convertible, Ferrari 599.

Episode 4 - Special edition.  Cross Botswana (in Africa) with a 1985 Mercedes 280e, a 1981 Lancer, a 1963 OPEL Kadell.

Episode 5 - Austin Martin V8 Vantage convertible, Caparo T1, Mercedes GL500

Episode 6 - Honda Civic Type R, Alfa 159, BMW M5 Touring, AMG Mercedes E class,

Episode 7 - Austin Martin DBS.  Three British classics Rover SD1, Triumph Dolomite, Austin Princess

Episode 8 - Vauxhall VX RS (aka Pontiac G8), Ford model T.

Episode 9 - Diahatsu Materia, Ascari A10 and a Fiat 500.   Top Gear raced 24 hours at Silverston with a modified diesel BMW.

Episode 10 - BMW M3, AMG Mercedes C class and Audi RS4.